


the call

by cartographicalspine



Series: The Meek [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Other, Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Here Lies the Abyss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:55:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23256520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographicalspine/pseuds/cartographicalspine
Summary: Warden-Commander Basma Kader is waylaid en route to answer a summons, but it's not the darkspawn she's worried about.
Series: The Meek [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672186
Kudos: 5





	the call

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, I'm back with canon breaks galore. This time, most notably "Mhairi lives" and "the Inquisitor is a Tranquil mage." Also the Orlesian Warden and Loghain have developed rapport beyond "Orlesian bad". Which, as you all know, is terribly OOC.

The last darkspawn fell at Basma’s feet, and with it the battlesong bled out slowly into the clearing as her Wardens regrouped around her. Some tended to minor wounds, and others paced among their felled enemies, while still a few simply stood, stock still, as though coming back to themselves. She could understand it, the sensation of succumbing to the call for longer than was wise, if it was even necessary at all. It would not be the first or last time for any of them. 

The sharp call of a whistle snapped her attention north, to where Warden Mhairi had vanished a moment ago.

Basma readjusted her arm’s position abruptly, senses and nerves taut around the instinctual motion to combat. But her officer’s face was calm, if puzzled, as she suddenly reappeared at the top of the hill. Sighing, Basma lowered her sword and began to trudge up the steps towards the stubborn remains of a ruined repository, perhaps, or some millhouse. The blade was still out when she crested the hill and walked straight into the remnants of the darkspawn that had escaped them in the attack.

Overhead, summer sang from the forest canopy and trailed down with the noontime sun, but the ruins were a sharp, crystallic garden of frozen steel and twisted darkspawn bodies. The magic here still clung heavily enough that her breath fogged up the air with every step deeper into the circle of statues. Recent, then.

Recent enough that Basma’s next step brought her gaze around a hurlock’s frozen grimace and to a stylized eye engraved on black armor. Eyes flickering upward, she took in the Seeker’s glower, flushed and wary from combat.

“You’re late,” the woman said in strained tones. “The Inquisitor should not have been kept waiting so long that darkspawn had time to set upon us.”

Basma allowed herself a moment to root out further hints of blight in the area but came up empty. She wiped her blade carefully and slid it back into its scabbard before looking up through the tree branches and into the sky. Just past noon. 

“Consider the possibility that the darkspawn were early,” she shrugged, resting her hands on the hilt of her sword, “and that your company is capable enough. I would not have come if I had suspected you weren’t.”

She dipped her head in a clipped bow. “Basma Kader. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I am here to coddle your feelings, Pentaghast.”

The woman’s face darkened to a fierce hue. “I assure you, the only one being coddled here is you and your slovenly tardiness.” 

Basma almost smiled at that. Pentaghast was rumored to have both a sharp tongue and a fiery temper, both in spades. Thus far, she had not disappointed in the slightest. 

“One would think you had never set foot in Orlais your entire life,” Basma muttered quietly, mostly a courtesy to herself. She then gestured at the rest of Pentaghast’s party. “Then we’ll skip the pleasantries. I was told you have my Warden."

Pentaghast wavered between indignation, confusion, and the same hard impatience that was set deeply into every line and angle of her armored body. She settled on snapping some bitter remark on the Order before shoving her way through the genlocks hunched over in icy demise. Shaking her head, Basma signaled Mhairi to follow, and the rest to keep watch..

After a few minutes' trek, they came across the Inquisition party in equally varied states like a reflection of the Wardens trailing her. Her gaze slid over the group, interestingly motley and misfit in a way that she didn’t often enjoy outside her company. Pentaghast led her past them to the middle of their loose circle, to the woman in robes seated on a crumbling wall. Her feet were near bare, covered only by slippers unfit for travel, though a pair of muddy boots lay discarded at her side. Her hair fell over her shoulders and down her back in thick, fiery spiral curls, framing a face and body much slighter than the stories told. The Chantry sunburst on her brow marked her as one of the Tranquil, serene beyond mortal stillness. 

She spoke with a man that Basma would have recognized with every sense half-struck away, months though it had been since they spoke in person. His hair had grown out considerably, and exhaustion typical of constant travel marred his expression and pooled in his eyes. His voice, however, was strong and well enough that she almost couldn't bring herself to interrupt. It had been a long time.

Basma cleared her throat. "Inquisitor Trevelyan, Warden Loghain...my greetings."

Loghain's eyes rose up to meet hers, and the corners of his mouth followed that imperceptible curve of a smile.

"Commander, you're late," he offered dryly as he stood, dusting himself off.

Basma inhaled deeply but quietly, measuring out how much tension there actually was in her back and shoulders. It had fled the moment she recognized him. 

"Surely, Inquisitor," she said, not taking her eyes off Loghain's face, "you might have left him out on that sodden patch of Ferelden mud."

Loghain did not roll his eyes, but the sentiment lay unsaid between them. "I said as much, but the Orlesian countryside was deemed more grueling a punishment."

"For a celebrated patriot of his renown?” Basma turned to look at Trevelyan appraisingly. “Your judgments are as fitting as the rumors say." 

The Inquisitor stood then with Pentaghast’s help, forgoing the boots at her feet to approach Basma quickly. Her hands fluttered where her mouth hesitated in speech in a way that Basma recognized from her own dealings with the Silent Sisters, but Inquisitor Trevelyan’s tongue soldiered on regardless.

"Thank you for meeting with us," the woman stuttered, bright and pink as daybreak despite her initial tranquility. "I don’t think I’d like to know about those rumors, but that was probably a joke. Am I right in that...assumption?”

“I don’t joke,” Basma lied, noting every move and gesture on the Inquisitor’s part: the lips trembling, the throat contracting, the hands twitching. “And I know what your little clique thinks of the Wardens. If Loghain turns out to be right, there’s no question as to what I expect you to do. Am I right in _that_ assumption?”

Pentaghast was glowering from above Trevelyan’s shoulder, eyes like a hot poker stoking the embers, but she seemed almost resolute. Loghain, expectedly, watched her with a weary resignation that told her he had come to the same conclusion as well. But Trevelyan interested her the most, suddenly cold and distant in a new way that didn’t come with her condition. A healing scar puckered tight at the corner of her mouth, her eyes like glass in a porthole at sea.

“We should discuss this in private,” she said haltingly, though it was not fear or nerves that Basma detected in her speech but anger. Her tone brokered no argument. “Now.” 

Basma gathered her own response, compartmentalizing the emotions that made her pulse quicken and her shoulders tighten. She had not run her order for over a decade by relying on the fervor of mere sentiment. And she would certainly not let a slipshod, patchwork cult of an organization get their hands on the Wardens for this fanatic to decide their fates like she had any right to do so. “Lead the way.”


End file.
